LINUX FOUNDATION executive director Jim Zemlin claims it is time that developers killed off Microsoft’s FAT filesystem from their projects and adopt the unencumbered open source alternative.

Zemlin claims the Vole has been expressing an affinity for openness and encouraging critics to give it the benefit of the doubt. However, he doubts that Microsoft is ever going to change.

He thinks that product makers should start making software that does not depend on Volish FAT and get with an open sauce programme.

Writing in his bog, he said Microsoft’s FAT filesystem was at the heart of most of its legal complaints with the Open Sauce community. This file system is easily replaced by others and the Linux Foundation said it is prepared to help.

He said that if developers go on a FAT free diet they can be freed from some of the nasty patent traps that Vole has sunk into it.

Zemlin claimed that the FAT filesystem is largely anachronistic and the specific features covered by patents are bizarre legacy compatibility characteristics.

Many outfits license these patents because Windows operating system turned FAT into the dominant format for memory cards and removable media.

Even some Linux distributions use native open source filesystems -such as Ext3 -on regular internal storage, but still use Microsoft’s FAT on removable media in order to ensure compatibility with Windows and existing devices.

Zemlin said that an industry-wide shift towards an open royalty-free format in the hardware space could potentially liberate device makers from this dependence on Microsoft’s encumbered technology.

2 Responses

I don’t claim to be an expert but so long as Windows relies so much on its DOS heritage – no matter what they say about Vista or v7 – surely FAT16 or FAT32 is doomed to remain the norm for Windoze sheep?